The female body and the denial of rights take centre stage at the Sguardi Altrove Festival
- The 31st Women’s International Film Festival, unspooling in Milan from 15 to 24 March, will pay tribute to Justine Triet, fresh from her Oscar win, as well as showcasing 60 films from 30 countries
Over 60 films hailing from 30 countries and divided across three competition sections, not to mention international guests, masterclasses and space dedicated to education are all on the agenda in the Sguardi Altrove Women’s International Film Festival, whose 31st edition is unspooling in Milan between 15 and 24 March and which will be dedicated to Federico Fellini’s muse, actress Sandra Milo, who passed away at the end of January. This international gathering dedicated to the promotion of film and female creativity is this year paying tribute to French director and screenwriter Justine Triet, screening two of her feature films released before the multi-award-winning work Anatomy of a Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile], which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and has just won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The two movies in question are In Bed With Victoria [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile], released in 2016 and presented in Cannes’ Critics’ Week, and Sibyl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile] from 2019, which was selected for Cannes’ Official Competition.
“The theme of the body runs through the entire festival programme”, assures Sguardi Altrove director Patrizia Rappazzo. Everyday stories and struggles for rights characterise the movies selected for the Nuovi Sguardi competition, which offers up a panorama of female works hailing from Europe and the Middle East through to Asia and North America, in either fictional or documentary form. The selected authors include Brit Ella Glendining, who is the director and protagonist of Is There Anybody Out There? [+see also:
film review
film profile] (earning her a nomination for this year’s Best New Director BAFTA), in which she explores her unusual body and the discrimination which has always mired her life and her relationships with others. The protagonist of Come le tartarughe [+see also:
trailer
film profile], meanwhile, by Italian director Monica Dugo, hides in a wardrobe and refuses to come out in this portrait of a quiet middle-class family which falls apart when the husband and father leaves the family home. Seven Winters in Teheran [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (France/Germany) by Steffi Niederzoll and Europa [+see also:
film review
interview: Sudabeh Mortezai
film profile] (Austria/UK) by Sudabeh Mortezai both tackle the topics of rights and justice, the former unfolding in modern-day Iran and the latter set in rural Albania. Lyd (Palestine/UK/USA), for its part, by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland – documentary-makers who are respectively Palestinian and a New York-Jewish – looks at modern-day life in a town where a retaliatory attack carried out by the Israeli army in 1948 forced the local people into exile.
In the #FrameItalia competition, 9 national titles will battle it out for the SNCCI Prize, the Audience Award and the Youth Jury Award, including Body Odyssey [+see also:
film review
interview: Grazia Tricarico
film profile] by Grazia Tricarico (Italy/Switzerland), Mi fanno male i capelli [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Roberta Torre, I Told You So [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Ginevra Elkann, Devoti tutti by Bernadette Wegenstein, 100 preludi by Alessandra Pescetta, and Mama Mercy by Alessandra Cutolo.
Standing tall amongst the festival’s various focuses is Armenian Films by Women, which will feature director, producer and screenwriter Mariam Ohanyan, who is also the director of the Kin Women’s International Film Festival in Yerevan, which she founded in 2003 to support women filmmakers in her country; a Window onto the Middle East, showcasing documentaries from Palestine and Israel; and a focus on Inclusion & Diversity. Space will also be made for education, courtesy of workshops on how to write female-style comedy, careers within TV, the paradox of being an actor, female characters in Italian TV series, and the female body in film, based on Giovanna Mezzogiorno’s short film Unfitting.
(Translated from Italian)
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